The new data provides vote counts for each polling area in a riding, as well as a breakdown of vote tallies for advance polls and absentee ballots. The data can help explain how candidates pulled off upset wins — such as Green MLA Andrew Weaver in Oak Bay-Gordon Head — as well as provide a window into how the politics of ridings break down along geographic lines.

At the start of the election campaign, we provided readers with poll-by-poll maps for 12 key ridings to watch during the campaign, based on poll-by-poll results from the 2009 election.

Now, based on the new data released by Elections BC, I decided to take a look at three ridings where there was an upset win on May 14: David Eby’s victory over Liberal Premier Christy Clark in Vancouver-Point Grey, NDP candidate George Heyman’s defeat of Liberal health minister Margaret MacDiarmid in Vancouver-Fairview and Green candidate Andrew Weaver’s breakthrough win in Oak Bay-Gordon Head.

Of the three ridings I looked at, this one showed the least shift between the two elections. In both campaigns, Eby’s support was centred around Kitsilano and UBC while Clark was strong in Point Grey. A few neighbourhoods changed hands but Clark seems to have taken as many polls away from Eby as vice versa (for example, Clark seems to have consolidated her support in the southeast of the riding, along 16th, since 2011). The lack of any major shift isn’t all that surprising given how close the vote was both times.

The secret to NDP candidate George Heyman’s success is a bit easier to decipher from this map. Overall, the politics of the riding didn’t change much between 2009 and 2013. Both times, the southwest of the riding (Shaughnessy) was heavily Liberal and the northwest of the riding (Mount Pleasant) heavily NDP. The difference in 2013 is that Heyman was able to consolidate his base of support. In 2009, there were pockets of Liberal support in the NDP’s core, with a handful of red polling areas along Columbia Street and in the neighbourhoods around 16th and Oak. All those areas were much more solidly NDP this time. In contrast, the Liberals appear to have gained little new territory.

Of all 85 ridings in the province, this Vancouver Island riding saw the most dramatic change on election night. In 2009, Green Party candidate Steven Johns didn’t win a single polling area. In 2013, Green party candidate Andrew Weaver won most of them and took the seat: the first Green MLA in the province’s history. The most interesting thing about this map is how much Weaver scrambled the electoral map in Oak Bay-Gordon Head.

In 2009, when Liberal Ida Chong won, the riding was pretty clearly split along east-west lines. West of Gordon Head Road, most of the areas went NDP. East of that line, along the coast, most areas went Liberal (with some exceptions at the south end of the riding).I don’t know Oak Bay well enough to know how this translates into income levels, but I suspect the Liberals are strongest in the richer neighbourhoods.

In 2013, though, the map is a jumble: green pockets of support stretch through both previously Liberal and NDP strongholds. The map may provide further grist to the ongoing debate over whether the Green Party “stole” votes from the NDP on May 14. This map seems to suggest support for the Greens is not so easy to explain, at least in this riding.

As an aside, this map suffers from one of my consistent complaints about Elections BC maps: boundaries often extend weirdly into the water, making them a bit hard to decipher.

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